Apparently unsettled by the shocking loss of its gubernatorial election in Ekiti State, the South East chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has begun to perfect plans to ensure that it does not meet similar fate in Imo State where its candidate and incumbent governor, Rochas Okorocha, is angling for a second term in office.

Although Okorocha’s team has said there is no cause for alarm, controllers of the party’s machineries in the zone are not leaving anything to chance.

CEOAFRICA gathered that the party’s South East chapter has begun to study the Ekiti situation, with emphasis on events that transpired before, during and after the elections.

To avert what has become known as the ‘Ekiti charade’ and provoke other strategies to ensure Okorocha is returned in 2015, the zone’s chapter of the party has began a wide consultation with its other leaders in South West, South South and other parts of the country.

This consultation, Sunday Independent gathered, has been championed by the chairmen of APC in the five South Eastern states.

Back in Imo, the party chieftains, who have been involved in regular and nocturnal meetings since the Ekiti shocker, have also commenced aggressive grassroots sensitisation and public enlightenment on the giant strides of Okorocha.

Also, the party has fashioned its regular zonal/ward meeting to strengthen the party at the grassroots through effective reconciliation of aggrieved members and to dissuade members itching to abandon the idea as well as woo back those who had deserted the party for sundry reasons.

To ensure that the party’s renewed membership drive yields the expected result, the party, it was learnt, has come up with mouth-watering incentives for zonal and ward chairmen whose areas of jurisdiction record an explosion of members.

The APC hierarchy in the state has also been extending hands of fellowship to major opinion moulders, social commentators and opinion analysts with the capacity to positively influence and redirect public perception of the party as one that has the interest of the Igbo at heart, as against the impression that it is northern Muslims party.

In another move aimed at making the best of its members in the 2015 political elections, the party’s bigwigs have reportedly prevailed on Okorocha to bring back former executive members who were relieved of their appointments following a cabinet reshuffle.